


Static Interference

by SnowStormSkies



Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: Background Het, Beauty - Freeform, Could Be Canon, F/M, Makeup, Not Quite Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowStormSkies/pseuds/SnowStormSkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just having someone touch your hair and your face, and the sound of soft music in the background, and relaxing into it, that's the perfect way to begin the day. For Bill, I think it's a moment to both brace for the day ahead, and to appreciate what she does for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Static Interference

**Author's Note:**

> Could be read as Bill/Natalie which is why I marked it as such.. It doesn't have to be, though.
> 
> Thanks to Casey for the beta!

 

When Bill gets out of the shower, he sees that Natalie’s already been in.

That’s good. She’s good – very good at her job, even at this hour. Ten to fucking six in the morning. Bill’s had it up to **here** with make up artists who treat him just as another dummy, another model whose only job is to stand there and look pretty. _Eight_ make up artists, that’s how many he’s trialled personally, God only knows how many more never made it through David’s harsh interview process.

Natalie made it, though.

She’s put his toothbrush and favourite brand of toothpaste on the side of the sink, and his mouthwash, and his dental floss, and he knows that’s supposed to be his job but… but she just… it’s not his job.

After spitting the sharp, astringent mouthwash out, he looks in the mirror again. Natalie’s radio outside changes station – she knows he doesn’t like the bubblegum pop she likes to wake up to in the morning. It’s nothing against the bands or the radio hosts personally – although that might change if he gets asked about the girl from _Hxn_ who keeps saying she’d fuck him yet again when she’s about fourteen – but he likes to start his day with something a little more…

Debussy seeps under the door, and Bill grins.

He doesn’t look himself in the mornings, he thinks, or rather, he looks too much like himself, and it’s up to Natalie to add in that distance with her bottles and creams and brushes. She turns him from Bill Kaulitz, boy from Magdeburg who’s not such a boy anymore to…

**Bill Kaulitz.**

He doesn’t even need any more than that now, he’s that… that famous.

That different.

He pushes open the door to the hotel room, feeling the tile change under his bare feet to thick, dove grey carpet, the warmth much appreciated.

Natalie looks up at him, and her smile is bright. She’s wearing jeans, a close fitting t-shirt that says _personal staff_ and her ID tag around her neck is on a brilliant scarlet lanyard. Her hair is down.

She looks like a part of Bill’s world now, even though she’s only been with the crew eight weeks. But then again, in this world – Bill’s world – full of camera flash blindness, and concert deafness, eight weeks is a lifetime. It’s one quarter to one third of a tour. That’s how Bill counts time now – not in years, but in terms of tour, of studio, of downtime and uptime, and bus time and hotel nights and interview days.

His calendar is fucked but it’s not his job to keep track of it.

They don’t say anything – there’s no need, not this time of the morning – but one of the PAs has brought them both steaming cardboard mugs of coffee. Natalie is a sweet, frothy cappuccino.

Bill’s is an Americano, the rich, blunt taste of the coffee dragging his brain out of the dream mist that still lingers, even though he’s showered, shaved his face and body, and had his morning honey and lemon tea.

In front of the dresser, Natalie’s pulled out the contents of her make up trunk, and her hair kit, and it’s all scattered like an apothecary’s stores. There’s nail varnish, and hair spray, and hair straighteners, and her coffee mug full of make up brushes, and foundation, and eyeshadow and everything he could possibly need or want to make him look something other than himself.

Taped to the mirror is one of his photos from a production meeting with an image consultant, a professional celebrity stylist, and the producers.

They know what they want, and it’s Natalie’s job to reproduce it. It’s Bill’s job to sit there and take it.

Today is look number six. In neat yet somehow illegible handwriting, someone has named it, succubus meets Hollywood.

Bill is coming back to wearing make up after almost two days of wandering around virtually barefaced, and bare nailed, and often barefoot to boot. He likes his down time but that’s over, and he’s back to being straightjacketed in lip-gloss and high heels.

It doesn’t take long.

He shouldn’t have a personal dresser – David raised merry hell when he found out what Natalie was doing but Bill, for once, stood firm. They were worried about scandal, about someone reporting Bill’s diva-ish behaviour, about Natalie getting too deep with Bill because when a man and a woman were alone, bad things could happen, apparently. Bill knew better. He needed someone to help him into high heels, arrange his clothes, help him choose clothes that presented the right image for the band. Being close was just a side effect he chose to keep to himself.

Image.

That was the magic word.

Once they came around, Natalie could come around in the morning, help Bill get dressed, lace his boots while his nails dried, fix his shirts away from his made up face so the pristine white cotton didn’t mark, clip his braces in so he didn’t cut or pinch his fingers.

Every single part of Bill has to be protected.

After dressing, she starts with his hair, only because it takes the most time. To go from faint curly and hanging down to the artificially gravity-defying palm tree takes time, and hair spray, but Natalie is patient in untangling his thick black hair, combing them out, spraying each individual section with fine hold lacquer, pinning it upright with a bobby pin until it can be trusted to stay up on its own.

Half an hour, and he’s half way done. His coffee is drunk, and Natalie stands behind him as she finishes the last of hers off.

Everything tastes like hairspray.

The next part is more difficult.

Natalie’s careful hands smooth the concealer along the darkness in his jaw – it’s faint, hardly noticeable but the management don’t like it when he’s tried to let it show – and along his upper lip, turning the skin into smooth porcelain underneath her warm fingers. No imperfections here.

Her hands make equally light work of the blusher – just make sure he doesn’t appear too doll like, the careful plucking of a few stray hairs between his brows, gentle reshaping of his eyebrows with a dark brown pencil. He has to restrain his eyebrow from rising in retaliation to the assault it’s going through, and she murmurs a soft remonstration at him.

Gradually, he’s turning from an almost man to an androgynous stranger. Some days he likes it, he can hide behind it, and he wants the privacy, and the secrecy, but there are days as well when he misses himself. He misses catching sight of himself in a window, or a glass table, and knowing it’s him, rather than looking around for someone behind him, confused when he can’t see anyone.

She finishes with a slick of lip gloss, and it’s not cherry flavour but it’s close, and it makes him look…complete.

The image is ready for people to view.

She helps him tuck his bag onto his shoulder, brushing away invisible flecks of dust, biting her own lip because Bill has to be _perfect_ and it’s her job.

Bill knows she’s done it well.

**Author's Note:**

> I liked the ASMR feel this had to it.


End file.
